UNITED STATES
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
WASHINGTON, D. C. 20555
September 22, 1986
TO ALL LICENSEES AND HOLDERS OF AN APPLICATION FOR AN OPERATING LICENSE
Gentlemen:
SUBJECT: INFORMATION RELATING TO COMPLIANCE WITH 10 CFR 50.49,
"ENVIRONMENTAL QUALIFICATION OF ELECTRIC EQUIPMENT IMPORTANT TO
SAFETY FOR NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS", (GENERIC LETTER 86-15)
Generic Letters, Bulletins, and Information Notices have been issued to
provide guidance and clarify the intention of 10 CFR 50.49, "Environmental
Qualification of Electric Equipment Important to Safety for Nuclear Power
Plants". Generic Letter 85-15, issued August 6, 1985, provided information
related to the deadlines for compliance with 10 CFR 50.49 and possible civil
penalties should licensees operate in non-compliance with the rule. The
purpose of this letter is to provide additional guidelines on appropriate
licensee actions in situations where environmental qualification of
equipment is suspect and on current NRC policy with regard to enforcement of
10 CFR 50.49.
When a licensee discovers a potential deficiency in the environmental
qualification of equipment (i.e., a licensee does not have an adequate basis
to establish qualification), the licensee shall make a prompt determination
of operability, shall take immediate steps to establish a plan with a
reasonable schedule to correct the deficiency, and shall have written
justification for continued operation. This justification does not require
NRC review and approval.
The licensee may be able to make a finding of operability using analysis and
partial test data to provide reasonable assurance that the equipment will
perform its safety function when called upon to mitigate the accidents for
which it is needed. In this connection, it must also be shown that
subsequent failure of the equipment under accident conditions will not
result in significant degradation of any safety function or provide
misleading information to the operator.
If the licensee is unable to demonstrate operability:
A. For inoperable equipment included in systems covered by plant
technical specifications, the licensee shall follow the
appropriate action statements. This could require the plant to
shut down within a limited period of time (or remain shut down).
B. For inoperable equipment not covered by the plant technical
specifications, the licensee may continue reactor operation:
1. If the safety function can be accomplished by other
designated equipment that is qualified, or
2. If limited administrative controls can be used to ensure the
safety function is performed.
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The licensee should also evaluate whether the findings are reportable under
50.72, 50.73, Part 21, the Technical Specifications or any other pertinent
reporting requirements, particularly if equipment is determined to be
inoperable.
Enclosed is a copy of enforcement guidance related to Generic Letter 85-15.
This letter does not require any response and therefore does not need
approval of the Office of Management and Budget. Comments on burden and
duplication may be directed to the Office of Management and Budget, Reports
Management Room 3208, New Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20503.
Should you have any questions, the staff contacts are Gary Holahan for
technical questions and Jane Axelrad for enforcement questions. Mr. Holahan
can be reached on (301)492-4410 and Ms. Axelrad can be reached on
(301)492-4909.
Sincerely,
Harold R. Denton, Director
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
Enclosure:
As stated
ENCLOSURE
ENFORCEMENT CRITERIA FOR EQ ENFORCEMENT
Application of the "Clearly knew, or should have known" test
The staff believes it is unlikely that licensees will be identified that
"clearly knew"" they had equipment for which qualification cannot be
established. The staff believes from discussions with licensees that all
licensees who were aware before November 30 that they had equipment for
which qualification could not be established elected to shut down rather
than operate in noncompliance under the daily penalty provision. Thus, the
issue in most cases will be for the staff to determine whether the licensee
"clearly should have known" that its equipment was not qualified. The staff
will examine the circumstances in each case to make the determination. The
factors the staff will examine include:
1. Did the licensee have vendor-supplied documentation that
demonstrated that the equipment was qualified?
2. Did the licensee perform adequate receiving and/or field
verification inspection to determine that the configuration of the
installed equipment matched the configuration of the equipment
that was qualified by the vendor?
3. Did the licensee have prior notice from any source that, equipment
qualification deficiencies might exist?
4. Did some licensees identify similar problems and correct them
before the deadline?
To illustrate how these factors would be applied in specific cases, the
staff will use as an example in the discussion which follows deficiencies in
the qualification of the internal wiring of certain valve operators recently
identified at several plants. Vendor EQ test reports provided to licensees
were ambiguous regarding whether the internal wiring of the operators was
qualified by the reports. It has now been determined that vendor EQ test
reports did not include qualification of the internal wiring of the
operators and that the wiring used in the test operators could be different
than the wiring installed in production units. Subsequent wiring
modifications by the valve manufacturer or by the installer have introduced
additional wiring which was not covered by the operator qualification
reports. Physical inspection has shown instances of unidentified or not
qualified wiring installed in several valve operators.
These operators are used on a wide variety of valves at the plants and in
many cases were used on valves which were part of systems covered by
technical specifications (TS) such as containment isolation valves. The
wiring in the operators should have been qualified by November 30, 1985.
Thus, plants at which such significant deficiencies are identified after the
deadline for which further testing or analysis is required to establish
qualification and which operated in noncompliance are subject to a possible
penalty of $5,000 per item per day if such licensees clearly knew or clearly
should have known of the deficiencies. In some plants, this could amount to
a substantial penalty.
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With regard to the first two factors, reliance on vendor-supplied
information on testing of equipment and performance of receiving and/or
field verification inspections, the licensees took the position that the EQ
test reports provided by the vendor covered the wiring and did not perform
adequate receiving or field verification inspections to positively identify
the internal wiring.We and the licensees now know that the vendor test
reports did not cover the wiring in the operators.
In addressing qualification by test, paragraph (f) of 10 CFR 50.49 requires
that each item of electrical equipment important to safety must be qualified
by testing an identical item or testing a similar item with supporting
analysis that the equipment to be qualified is acceptable. It may not be
reasonable to rely entirely on vendor-supplied information in establishing
similarity since changes to complex equipment are likely to occur during the
manufacturing process and/or installation. A comprehensive receiving and/or
field verification inspection of the equipment by the licensees should be
conducted to identify significant discrepancies between the as installed vs.
qualified configurations.
With regard to the third factor, prior notice of similar problems, the
results of one field verification inspection of equipment prompted IE to
issue an Information Notice in 1983 to alert licensees to several
deficiencies affecting equipment qualification. This Notice discussed a
construction deficiency report related to inspection of valve operators at a
plant under construction. Among several specific qualification-related
concerns, this Notice stated that "No identification was evident on certain
materials internal to the valve operators (e.g., wiring, insulation, etc.)"
and stated that "It is not presently known whether these types are qualified
for the service conditions." This Information Notice also highlighted the
fact that "Information obtained from purchase order files and qualification
files does not agree with the installed components." Based on the above, the
staff concluded this document provided prior notice of the potential
problems with certain valve operators. Given this information, it was
unreasonable for licensees to rely entirely on the vendor reports without
doing additional work to ensure that the wiring was qualified.
With regard to the fourth factor, some licensees did identify and correct
this problem before the November 30, 1985 deadline. The unqualified wiring
was identified by these licensees as a result of walkdown verification of
the installed equipment or comprehensive review of qualification files.
After consideration of all of these factors, the staff has concluded that in
the case of the wiring, licensees "clearly should have known" that the
vendor documentation was not adequate to support qualification.
Time Period to be Considered for Daily Civil Penalty
Once the staff concludes that the "clearly knew or should have known" test
is applicable, the staff must determine the appropriate period over which to
assess a daily civil penalty. The staff has concluded that the appropriate
period is from November 30, 1985 to the time the licensee completes its
evaluation and schedules corrective action. This approach should encourage
timely identification and evaluations by licensees of the qualification of
the equipment. A licensee should not be penalized for each day after the
problem
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is identified and appropriate corrective action is scheduled that it elects
to operate until the problem is fixed assuming a reasonable determination
was made that it was safe to allow continued operation. Imposing daily civil
penalties until the violation is corrected would provide strong incentives
for shutdown even though the licensee had determined that continued
operation for some reasonable period of time is not unsafe. However, if the
licensee's determination that it was safe to operate is later found to be in
error, shutdown may be required and the licensee may be subject to daily
civil penalties. Since such penalties are likely to quickly become
abnormally high, particularly as the length of time between the November 30
deadline and the date of inspection increases, the staff has determined that
some cap on the possible amount of the civil penalty should be imposed. The
staff has determined that this is appropriate especially for those cases in
which the "clearly should have known" test is applied as opposed to cases in
which the licensee "clearly knew" that they were not in compliance. The
staff has selected a cap of $500,000 per item or approximately the amount
that would be imposed for one item that was deficient for 100 days after the
deadline. The mitigation factors would then be applied to mitigate from
$500,000 per item down if appropriate. Similarly. since the reasonableness
of the schedule for corrective action is a factor to be considered for
mitigation of the daily civil penalty, if the licensee fails to meet its
schedule, additional civil penalties will be considered.
In the case of the valve operators described above, in one hypothetical
situation, suppose that a Resident Inspector notified one licensee two weeks
after the deadline that the qualification of the valve operators was
suspect.
That licensee evaluated the situation and concluded that the qualification
of the wiring could not be verified. The licensee performed a final
evaluation two weeks later justifying continued operation with the
unqualified equipment and planned to replace the equipment at the next
scheduled refueling outage in two months. The staff would conclude that this
licensee would be subject to a daily civil penalty of $5,000/item/day for 28
days.
Application of the Mitigation Factors
Once it has been determined that a licensee may be subject to a daily civil
penalty under this test, Generic Letter 85-15 specifies that the staff
should apply certain mitigation factors to determine the amount of the
proposed penalty. The factors specified in the letter were:
1. Did the licensee identify and promptly report the noncompliance
with 10 CFR 50.49?
2. Did the licensee apply best efforts to complete environmental
qualification within the deadline?
3. Has the licensee proposed actions which can be expected to result
in full compliance within a reasonable time?
These factors are self-explanatory. In addition, the staff would consider
the circumstances of each particular case including the significance of the
deficiencies identified, the opportunities available to identify and correct
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them, the time taken by the licensee to make a determination, the quality of
the supporting analysis, and the length of time the deficiencies existed
before identification. The following discussion illustrates how these
mitigation factors would be applied in the hypothetical case of a licensee
which identified the valve operator problem.
We assume that the licensee identified the potential problem with
qualification of the internal wiring of valve operators after conversations
with the NRC Resident Inspector. We assume that it immediately initiated a
timely investigation, determined that qualification of its valve operators
was not fully supported due to problems with the internal wiring, and
notified the NRC of this determination via telephone and continued to
evaluate the problem. Within two weeks of becoming aware of the problem, the
licensee submitted a 10 CFR Part 21 report to the NRC. Included in this
submittal was the licensee's justification for continued operation of the
plant and a plan for corrective action.
Further we assume that the licensee actively worked to achieve its 10 CFR
50.49 deadline of the second refueling outage after March 31, 1982 and was
able to meet it except for some items of equipment for which justifications
for continued operation (JCOs) had been approved. Later, NRC was notified by
telephone that all work on equipment scheduled for replacement and/or
relocation and covered by the previously approved JCOs had been
accomplished. Therefore, all equipment within the scope of 10 CFR 50.49 was
believed to be qualified well before.the November 30, 1986 deadline.
Finally, we assume that this licensee's 10 CFR Part 21 report submitted to
the NRC included a schedule for corrective actions to establish
qualification of the wiring of all valve operators within the scope of 10
CFR 50.49 and that this schedule called for the replacement of existing
wiring with qualified wiring on all affected operators within two months.
The staff has concluded that this licensee would be entitled to complete
mitigation under these factors. However, to be fair and equitable to those
licensees who either took appropriate actions prior to November 30 or shut
down on November 30 in order to be in compliance, some civil penalty should
be imposed. Thus, the staff has concluded that the daily civil penalty
should be adjusted in accordance with the factors but the civil penalty
levied should not be lower than $50,000, the base civil penalty for an
ordinary Severity Level III violation, in any case in which significant
deficiencies remained at the close of the inspection for which further
testing or analysis was required to establish qualification and which the
licensee "clearly knew or should have known" existed before the November 30
deadline.
Other Enforcement Regarding Violations of EQ Requirements Identified at
Plants Operating After November 30
If violations of the EQ rule identified during first-round1/ inspections at
plants operating after November 30, 1985 apparently existed before the
deadline, then the "clearly knew or should have known" test should be
applied. If the
1/ First-round inspections are special team inspections to review licensees'
compliance with 10 CFR 50.49.
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licensee meets the test, enforcement should be taken as described above. If
the licensee does not meet this test, no enforcement action should be taken.
If the licensee could not have reasonably been expected to discover the
problem before the November 30 deadline, presumably the noncompliance could
not have been avoided and enforcement action to deter future noncompliance
would serve no purpose.
If the violations of the EQ rule identified after November 30, 1985 do not
relate back to action or lack of action before the deadline; e.g., a
modification was made in January 1986 that created the violation, or are
identified after first-round inspections are completed, enforcement should
be taken under the current Enforcement Policy. The present policy states as
an example of Severity Level III: "2. A system designed to prevent or
mitigate a serious safety event not being able to perform its intended
function under certain conditions (e.g., safety system not operable unless
offsite power is available; materials or components not environmentally
qualified)." Thus, no changes to the Enforcement Policy are necessary to
take into account EQ violations. Consistent with the interpretations of the
Enforcement Policy in other areas, less significant violations that indicate
a programmatic breakdown can also be grouped and categorized as Severity
Level III violations.
For licensees that were not in compliance with the rule before the November
30, 1985 deadline and did not submit timely requests for extension, but
which did not operate in noncompliance after the deadline, consistent with
the Commission's direction in response to SECY 85-220, (Memorandum from S.
J. Chilk to W. J. Dircks, August 27, 1985) the staff will exercise
enforcement discretion after considering whether adequate JCO's were
provided and whether an extension would have been granted if timely filed.